


Riding the Dragon

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Brush With Death, Computers, Disasters, Drunk Tony Stark, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Massive Death Toll, Programming, Reunions, Sacrifice, Science Bros, Smart Thor, Steve Rogers Is Not Totally Oblivious, The Avengers Pull Together, Victory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One machine, no matter how unique, in exchange for the lives of thousands of men, women and children is a bargain that Steve Rogers was more than happy to take. Tony Stark, however, doesn't seem to see things quite the same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aftermath

The door leading from the lab to the corridor whispered open, but Steve Rogers didn't turn from where he stood with folded arms at the windows overlooking the belly of the Helicarrier, not really seeing what he was staring down at: he was too deep in thought, about any number of things. Things that didn't quite add up. Things that didn't make any sense. 

They'd won. They'd saved the lives of tens of thousands of people — potentially millions — and they should be celebrating. The Dragon was slain, its corpse sunk in the cold waters of Lake Ontario, and all the Avengers had survived the experience.  

Well, all the flesh and blood Avengers, anyway. And that was what counted, right? 

Right. So why did this feel like a funeral? 

"Tony," Nick Fury rumbled in his best _I'm your CO and you do_ ** _not_** _fuck with_ ** _me_** voice, and Steve looked up to see the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. standing in the doorway, his sharp gaze directed at Tony Stark where the inventor stood beside a flat examination table that featured a charred and battered humanoid shape, clearly holding himself upright only by sheer force of will. 

"Fuck off," Tony immediately replied, but his voice was a dull echo of its usual lively snap, the response barely more than reflexive. He hadn't strayed more than ten feet from the remains of Obsidian since he'd brought the robot in over three hours ago, even though he was clearly dead on his feet after two previous days of very little (or maybe no) sleep, and after the punishing ordeal of the battle itself. Looking at his pallor and the nasty dark circles around his eyes as he stared down at the battle android's remains, unmoving and unblinking, Steve had to wonder if he'd even recovered yet from his own encounter with the Dragon's poisonous aura. 

Sick or not, Steve didn't expect Fury to cut him any slack. He certainly didn't expect the Director to look him up and down, expression unreadable, before entering the room and coming to stand across the table from him. Tony didn't meet his gaze even when he spoke in a lower voice, almost soft: "You need to get some sleep." 

"I'm fine." Wow, not even a smart-aleck quip. He really was down a peg or two from his usual snide self. 

Fury inclined his head, manifestly not buying it. "Really? Because you look like hell and you smell even worse." 

And he did — ratty clothes, sweaty hair, unshaven, the sharp stench of Dragon-induced illness still clinging to him in a way that Steve's enhanced senses could pick up even from halfway across the room. And although he muttered "I'll take care of it" after a couple of seconds, he didn't really seem to be hearing himself. Certainly he didn't move from his self-imposed post. 

Bruce, who had been puttering around the lab pretending to do something scientific — Steve couldn't interpret the details, but he knew the smaller man was really hanging around just to keep Tony company — looked up sharply, and because Bruce looking sharp was seldom a good thing, Steve felt a spike of tension fire up his own spine. If Bruce felt that Tony was being threatened… well, the Other Guy had already proven his willingness to protect their mutual friend.  

But Fury didn't look particularly antagonistic. In fact, he almost looked… pitying, which was an expression that Steve had never expected to see on that particular face.  

"Maybe I can help you with that," he said, and reached into the right-hand pocket of his leather coat to pull out a squat bottle of amber liquid, which he held up for Tony's inspection with a pointed look. 

That got the billionaire's attention, of course. In fact it sparked a gleam in his dead gaze for the first time since he'd carried his android in here and laid it out on the table to open it up, and to determine that there really was nothing he could do. "Huh. Thought alcohol wasn't allowed on this crate." 

"One of the advantages of being the man in charge is that you get to break the rules." He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a short wide glass. "I brought enough for four. Doctor Banner, Captain, if you'd care to join us…?" 

"Who says I'll leave any for them?" Tony said sharply. When Fury turned toward the standard table in the far corner of the lab he followed at once, and once they were all seated he threw himself at the bottle like a man trying to drown himself, without wasting another word.

Fury drank sparingly, and watched silently. Bruce didn't sip from his glass at all, and watched compassionately. And Steve… Steve matched Tony drink for drink, because although he didn't understand what was going on he really felt that Tony shouldn't be putting away that much whiskey alone.  

His prize robot had been broken, and he was acting like someone who'd just lost his best buddy. The depth of pain shining in his eyes now, hot as molten metal, was one Steve recognized all too well, because he'd been there himself. There were still nights when he woke up in a cold sweat with images of Bucky's death replaying behind his eyes, and even a few dark hours when he'd sobbed into his pillow, stricken to weakness by the force of grief. 

He just couldn't understand why Tony was wasting that kind of feeling on a machine, even one as amazingly complex and useful — and yes, even as full of simulated personality — as KITT had been. But he didn't need to comprehend this situation to know that right now Tony needed friends around him, even if they never said a word. So he drank, although he couldn't get drunk, and when Tony tossed his fourth glass back and slurred with bitter savage venom — "Me… it should've been _me…!_ " — Steve simply nodded, even though there was no way in hell Tony could have slain the monster, and Tony had to know that.

None of them could have, because they were all alive. Only something built like the Dragon itself — cold metal, no blood, no beating heart — could have gotten close enough to do what KITT had done, and one machine, no matter how unique, in exchange for the lives of thousands of men, women and children was a bargain that Steve was more than happy to take. Hell, it was a bargain that KITT himself had obviously considered the logical choice under the circumstances. 

But to hear Tony talk, pouring out his rage and misery in savage intermittent sentences while Fury kept topping up his glass, you'd think it was the end of the world. 


	2. Disaster

And it _could_ well have been the end of the world, or at least of an important part of it.  

The international media would trumpet it as "Death On The Forty-Fifth Parallel", "The Great Toronto Disaster", and "Armageddon Over Lake Ontario", with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands and mounting panic as that number threatened to climb astronomically higher. 

It was the day that the Council seriously considered dropping a fifty megaton nuclear warhead on the Great Lakes area, although the general public would (perhaps mercifully) never realize how close they'd come to the irradiation of Region 16 and international military destabilization. 

It was also the day when an A.I. saved the northeastern United States, including New York City, from both lethal prospects through a split second decision and unflinching self-sacrifice, and around the world people mourned the destruction of Obsidian.  

To Steve Rogers, September 14th 2013 would always be remembered as "The Day Tony Stark Wept", even if only two other people had been present to witness it — three, if you counted JARVIS.  

But it had all begun with a metallic bogey tracking out of the Arctic at just over Mach 1, two hundred and sixty-seven metres long and fifty-two metres wide, on a trajectory which curved over several major population centres — and with stations going silent in a strip ten point six kilometres wide on either side of its path.  S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite images of Resolute, Nunavut showed all traffic at a halt and people lying dead in the streets after the object had thundered by overhead, and all attempts to raise anybody in the affected areas met with dead air. 

The Dragon had arrived, its origin and its goals unknown. Only its effect was brutally clear: wherever it passed, no living thing remained. 


	3. Intelligence

Nick Fury had one primary tone of voice, no matter how softly or how loudly he spoke: commanding, as if each syllable contained a meaning that was ignored at one's own peril. Today, however, Steve was hearing a new note. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but it set depth charges along all his nerves, just waiting to explode — and he wasn't one who got nervous easily. 

Although under the circumstances fear was probably exactly the right reaction, even if nobody present could afford it. 

"NORAD first picked up the UFO at 06:21 ET," Fury was saying, while a huge screen behind him displayed a satellite map with a green line superimposed on it, curving out of the north over Lake Winnipeg, then down to the major city just south of that body of water and sharply east. The city was a large red dot, with smaller red dots scattered along the course above it and clustered over the most recent end of the object's trajectory where it ran, ever-lengthening, along Canada's southern border. "We still haven't been able to determine whether or not it's an MFO — all we know for certain is that it's not one of ours." 

"And that it's clocking along like a jackrabbit on a date," Tony piped up from where he lounged in one of the briefing room chairs, looking like he'd just come out of his lab after three days of no sleep and plenty of greasy machine work — which was probably exactly the case. All the Avengers had been hauled in to the Helicarrier double-quick; even Steve was still clad in khakis and a t-shirt from his morning run, and Fury was apparently the only other male present who'd taken time to shave. "How fast did you say that thing was moving?" 

"I didn't." Fury cast a stern glare at him, which as usual seemed to bounce right off Tony's arrogance like a dum-dum bullet off of Captain America's shield. "It's maintained a steady airspeed of eight hundred and twenty-six miles per hour, except over Winnipeg — and here," and he pointed at the centre of the track over the lake, "where it slowed to twenty-three miles per hour, fell to an altitude of forty yards, and dropped lines into the water for thirty-seven minutes before retracting them and resuming its previous speed and course." 

Steve frowned. "IFR?" 

"Also unknown," Fury replied, while Tony swivelled his chair enough to murmur to Bruce, something about cracking hydrogen and oxygen bonds to produce energy. "But aside from its stopover in Winnipeg it's the only time the damned thing's so much as hiccupped. We've thrown everything we've got at it short of a tactical nuke and it keeps shooting them down — a couple of Archers made it through and just popped off its shields like match flares. It does the same thing to aircraft: two B-2s, four E-9As, six F-15 Eagles and an EC-130H, and that's not even counting the ones that got too close and had their crews just drop dead." 

Bruce, who'd been nodding at whatever Tony was murmuring to him, looked up with professional interest. "Dead? As in, lethally irradiated, or…?" 

Fury bit back a sigh. "We don't have any answers there, either. The bodies show no signs of irradiation, concussion damage, or any other gross physical trauma not attributable to some other cause. It's as if they just… stopped." 

Obsidian, who was standing behind Tony since he weighed a little too much for the briefing room chairs to easily support, inclined his inhuman head in a way that Steve had come to recognize as telegraphing when he was about to speak. " _An EMP pulse of sufficiently high intensity could disrupt the electrical functions of the human CNS, and it would have other effects consistent with what's been reported — stopped cars, downed communication grids, and so forth._ " 

Natasha responded: "But an EMP field wouldn't have a clearly defined edge, and it would have been detected by the drone recon. The Dragon's running cold according to all our sensors. Whatever this thing is doing, it's not any form of attack previously encountered." 

"Which doesn't make it any less lethal," Fury continued. "The Dragon's left everything in its path dead, from insects to elephants." He didn't have to indicate the red number at the top centre of the screen, which currently stood at 278,392 and rising: the death toll estimate which was growing with every passing second. "We've got to find a way to stop this thing, or to neutralize it until it _can_ be stopped." 

Tony grinned without much humour. "And you want Bruce and me to go all Science Bros on its shiny metal ass?" A glance at Bruce, who nodded once. "Sure, we can do that. Just —" 

"There may not be enough time for that." Steve had seldom seen Fury looking more grim. "We've got forty-eight minutes before this thing hits Toronto, and given the transportation infrastructure there isn't a hope in Hell of evacuating the Dragon's projected flight path in time. We need answers yesterday — and if we don't have answers, all we've got left is the Council's option." 

Thor's smooth brow wrinkled in perturbation. Tony sat up a little straighter, scowling ferociously while Obsidian gazed down at him intently. Bruce looked slightly more nervous than usual, although nowhere near the danger zone yet. Natasha and Clint always played their cards close to the vest, but the quality of silence from them now made Steve's blood run cold. None of them had forgotten what had nearly happened to New York City.  

"No," Steve said, quietly but decisively. "With all due respect, sir, that's not an —" 

"If it prevents the Dragon from entering the northeastern United States," Fury concluded, "you can be damned sure the Council will —" 

"How big?" Tony asked sharply.  

Fury's voice was perfectly level, which was more than Steve could have managed. "The Council wants to nuke it with a fifty megaton warhead." 

"Fifty —!" Tony's dark eyes lit up, and not in a good way. "Tell me we're talking about some top secret pure fusion weapon that even I haven't heard of yet!" 

Fury gave him a _Settle down, children_ look that would have quelled any lesser man. "It doesn't —" 

"Because if you're actually suggesting dropping your garden variety nuclear fusion bomb on southern Canada…" He looked around the room, incredulous, and spread his arms. "Come on, I can't be the only one here who's noticed that that'll produce a radiation cloud big enough to light up half the province _and_ most of New York State?" 

"As opposed to the potential devastation of the entire Eastern seaboard," Fury pointed out. 

"The key word in that sentence being _potential_ ," Tony countered. 

" _And he's got an exceptionally valid point,_ " Obsidian interjected, folding his arms in an attitude almost of confrontation while turning his tracking scanner on the Director. " _With current prevailing wind conditions, a fifty megaton strike on the Dragon's present position would produce a fallout cloud which would drift south-east at an approximate speed of fifty-two miles per hour, and eight-nine miles per hour in the upper elevations. It would blanket the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, including Toronto, and would reach New York City, not greatly diminished in lethality, within —_ " 

Fury's eye narrowed at the robot, then took all the Avengers in with a glance. "You're not telling me anything I'm not already well aware of." 

"Then why the hell are you even talking about doing this?" Tony demanded. 

"I'm not the one doing the talking. The Council is —" 

" _Fuck_ the Council!" Tony said, and for once Steve could say with confidence that the cocky little billionaire spoke for all of them. "We can take care of this." He glanced around at his fellow Avengers. "Right?" Then back to Fury. "How much time can you buy us?" 

Fury appeared to chew that over for a couple of seconds, although Steve suspected he'd known full well exactly what their reaction would be. "The Council is willing to lose Toronto, but if the Dragon crosses the Great Lakes they'll blow it out of the skies." He looked behind him at the screen, taking in the airspeed figure of their bogey. "Everything depends on how long the Dragon's layover in Toronto turns out to be — it took eighteen minutes to decimate Winnipeg — but we're on an intercept course that will intersect its projected trajectory somewhere over Lake Ontario, probably within the next seventy-five to ninety minutes." 

"Right into its jaws," Bruce murmured, and then glanced at Tony and grinned in a way that Steve didn't like at all. "Brutal. Let's do this." 

" _Director Fury,_ " Obsidian interjected with an audible frown, " _surely it also hasn't escaped your notice that given the relative difference between the Helicarrier's top airspeed and the Dragon's, plotting an intercept course which will keep us out of its range of devastation will be —_ " 

"Duly noted," Fury said curtly. "Any more questions, people?" 

Steve raised his hand, ignoring the way Tony rolled his eyes. "Sir, my enhanced metabolism might be immune to the Dragon's effects. I volunteer to pilot the aircraft to deliver whatever —" 

"Playing Jesus doesn't suit you, Cap," Tony mocked. "Besides, you'd just get blown out of the skies by it's dynamite-with-a-laser-beam attack. Leave the flying to people who know how it's done." He glanced back over his left shoulder. "You up for this, sweetheart?" 

" _Always,_ " Obsidian nodded. 

"Awesome." He snapped his fingers, right-left, then clapped his hands together. "Okay, people, you heard the physicist — let's get some science happening here!" 

As everybody rose from their seats Steve couldn't help but notice that Thor looked solemn — but also undeniably pleased, probably at the prospect of fighting what seemed like a relatively straightforward monster, even — hell, maybe especially — because it was a death-or-glory scenario. And he also noticed that nobody had said a peep about being in the blast zone if the Council went the nuclear route. His heart briefly soared: they were a crew of misfits, this unit under his command, but nobody on Earth could deny that they were all heroes. Steve could only hope, fervently, that this wouldn't turn out to be their last hopeless stand against an alien enemy — or against people who were supposedly their own allies.  

Once in the corridor they all went their own separate ways without another word, but Steve could predict their destinations with considerable confidence: Tony and Bruce to the labs, of course, Thor to the mess halls to bolster the spirits of the Helicarrier's off-duty crew with his presence, Obsidian to the flight decks on a similar mission with those on-duty, and Natasha and Clint to their assigned quarters to do a pre-battle weapons check. For his own part, Steve headed for the command deck: he wanted to be at the nerve centre, to absorb and process all incoming information on the deadly threat they faced.  

He didn't bother to tell them to be ready to come together at a moment's notice. In the last fourteen months, as improbable as it was by any rational standard, they'd become a team — and when the time was right they'd assemble and stand ready to fight with everything they had, up to and including their own lives.  


	4. Failure

"That's your plan," Steve said seventy-one minutes later in Lab Ten, and it definitely wasn't a question. He knew that look, coming from both Tony and Bruce. They were deadly serious. 

Tony stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on the heels of his sneakers, nodding decisively. "Yep." 

"'Drop the Hulk on it'?" Steve paraphrased, just to be absolutely clear. 

Bruce shrugged almost apologetically. "We're brilliant, but even we can't do much with this little data. Nothing's gotten close enough to get a really good scan of the mechanism. We don't even know for sure what's powering it, much less how to mess it up enough to stop it." 

"Except that it's probably running on a variation of hydrogen fuel cell technology," Tony offered. "Or, if you really want to get outre, on some weird-ass version of cold fusion. In either case I think we should let Thor take a couple of shots at it first, to, you know, maybe soften it up a bit." He glanced at his watch, which probably cost more than Steve's motorcycle, and scowled at the way the second hand was racing around it. "Anyway — the Other Guy is, quite frankly, the best hammer we've got for this particular nail. Two out of two geniuses agree." Evidently Steve didn't look convinced, because Tony flashed a smile more like a grimace. "Of course, getting through the Dragon's shields is going to be a trick and a half all by itself, but KITT's pretty good at —"  

"That thing's death field extends for at least five hundred yards on every side," Steve interrupted. "You're telling me you're going to fly Bruce up there at over Mach 1 and _drop_ him? Can he even survive a fall from that height onto that kind of energy shield?" 

Bruce smiled, small and tight. "I couldn't — but I'd bet any money that _he_ can. I guess we'll find out, right?" 

Tony waved an impatient hand. "Pop the good Doctor inside a pressure suit and he'll be ready to fly. Trust me, Cap, I'm fully bonded." 

If Steve had been a different kind of man, this would have been the point at which he'd said: "Fuck me sideways, you're both out of your fucking _minds!_ Stop screwing with me — what's the plan, really?" 

Being the well brought-up boy he was, he nodded instead, and confined his response to an order: "Be ready to go in ten minutes." And he certainly didn't flip Tony Stark the bird when the billionaire grinned and saluted him smartly as he turned to head up to the top flight deck, where he was guaranteed the best view of the nightmare they were about to face. 

************************************** 

"Well," Tony remarked nine and a half minutes later, his scowl perfectly visible with his armour's faceplate raised, "there's a sight I could have happily gone my whole life without seeing." 

Steve knew exactly what he meant. From the Helicarrier's open deck less than twenty metres above water the Dragon was clearly visible three miles north-west across the lake on this bright autumn morning — a deceptively small object not-quite-unexpectedly slowed to a crawl as its energy-coated lines trawled the water, presumably sucking up more fuel. If Steve had tried to draw its contours objectively he would have had to concede the smooth elegance of its design, like a streamlined cross between a cockroach and snake, heavily plated and studded with low glowing nodes, but vision didn't capture everything it conveyed: there was something about it that penetrated deeper, into the hindbrain, and made Steve's skin crawl under the tight clasp of his uniform. It was poisonous in a way that had nothing to do with his knowledge that it was already responsible for nearly half a million deaths — it radiated lethal purpose, as if the taint of its distant thanotic field was being somehow being carried on the light wind skimming across the cloud-dusted sky.  

At Steve's side, Thor nodded solemnly as he watched the distance-tiny dots of twenty-one F-15 Eagles and twenty-eight F-22 Raptors swooping and circling the Dragon at a minimum distance of a two thousand yards, just far enough away not to trigger its threat response. "I have spoken with the three Norns and lived to tell the tale, and this creature breathes the foul taint of Skuld's death-thrall. It must be stopped — the cost matters not — else it will devour the souls of millions more." 

"Let's try to keep that cost as low as possible," Steve stated, firmly pushing down his seething frustration at the thought of two cities and tens of smaller communities already turned into graveyards by this abomination, and at his suspicion that the Council might have had a twisted reason for letting it get this far that went beyond concern for destabilizing the complex web of international nuclear tensions. 

"Could be a Kobayashi Maru scenario," Tony said in a tone that could be mistaken for dispassion by those who didn't know him well, then continued more waspishly in response to Steve's impatient glance: "A no-win situation, Capsicle. God! Watch a movie sometime." 

" _Tony, I'm really not sure this is a good idea._ " Obsidian's scanner was flashing more swiftly than Steve had ever seen before, his chin slightly raised and his gaze apparently fixed on their enemy. " _The thanotic field's range isn't stable — the slightest miscalculation, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, could easily put you —_ " 

"We've been through this," Tony snapped back, and proceeded to outline the reasons why he had to be the one to carry Bruce — the Other Guy feeling more comfortable around him, Obsidian's potentially greater value as a diversion — but Steve's attention was diverted by Natasha's voice in his ear: "Steve? We're in the quinjet, ready for launch on your mark." 

"Get in the air, but stick to the recon pattern and try to get a solid scan on the target." He knew he didn't have to tell the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to avoid unnecessary heroics, but he couldn't help adding: "And be careful out there." 

"Roger that," the assassin said crisply, then unexpectedly returned the benediction: "You too." 

It was a touch of sentimentality that made Steve feel both warmer and colder. This wasn't the first time that team members could have died at any moment, but this situation was different. He'd learned to trust his instincts in the field, and every instinct he possessed was screaming that this set-up stunk to high heaven. If the Council launched that nuke there wouldn't be a damned thing they could do about it — there was no handy portal to deep space this time, and diverting the bomb would only unleash its dirty payload with a reduced chance of destroying the Dragon. 

Steve didn't believe in a no-win scenario, but damn it, this might be the incident that proved him wrong. He couldn't even get near enough to the monster to throw his shield, and even the Helicarrier was effectively a glorified OP, since Fury had already proved, the minute they were within range, that none of its weapons were able to do more than bounce off the thing's energy shields in spectacular pyrotechnic displays. 

"Suit up, Buttercup," Tony was telling Bruce, who stood clad head to toe in tight black neoprene with blast-glasses covering his eyes and an oxygen tank strapped to his back. While the physicist secured the attached mask to his face Tony turned his attention to Obsidian. "KITT, I want you to fly a distraction pattern — give it something else to think about besides us. Got it?" 

" _Will do!_ " He still didn't sound one hundred percent approving, but at least he seemed willing to follow Tony's directives. With this particular robot that wasn't always a given. 

"Good boy." He turned to Steve and Thor, a cocky smile quirking his full lips. "If this turns out to be a one-way trip, I just want you to know, it's been a slice. Of what, I won't say — my momma taught me that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." 

Steve barely resisted the temptation to grimace: apparently even an approaching apocalyptic doom machine couldn't stop Tony Stark from running his mouth. "I expect you to come back in one piece." He took in Bruce and Obsidian with the same glance. "All of you. That's an order." 

"Aye aye, Captain!" Tony saluted again, grinned one final time, and snapped his faceplate shut. It turned his voice to an electronic projection, in the air and on the general comm frequency: "Let's rock this party out, boys. Yo, everybody topside — _incoming!_ " 

He picked up Bruce under one arm and activated his repulsors, soaring skyward with the physicist's arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders and Obsidian close behind. They turned north-west and blasted to Mach 1 in a smooth swift burst that left twinned discs of condensation and a pair of echoing booms behind, the rumble not even dead in the air before Thor's hammer hummed and lightning started to gather out of the clear sky above. 

Steve detached the S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue binoculars from his belt and raised them to his eyes, bringing the Dragon into much closer visual range — and with it, the tiny black streak of speed that was Obsidian, darting suicidally close and weaving daring intricate patterns only tens of yards outside its shield, drawing bursts of yellow-green energy fire through the paler green sheath protecting the Dragon. Less than three seconds later a white tangled blaze of power streaked down to smite the huge machine with all the ferocity of a demi-god's wrath — but failed to penetrate its shields, Steve could tell as much immediately.  

He couldn't see Iron Man against (or perhaps behind, by now) the flare of Thor's attack, but Tony's voice was clear on the comm: "Looking good, guys, we're —" 

It abruptly stopped dead. Steve scarcely had time to feel the first pang of apprehension before Tony spoke again, this time a nearly delirious agonized groan: "Oh, oh _God_ , this is —" 

And then he saw them as Thor's first attack spent itself and the airspace cleared: Iron Man faltering and stalling out five hundred and fifty yards above the Dragon, and starting to fall toward the energy-sheathed behemoth below with a limp Bruce Banner still loosely clasped under one arm. 

It happened so fast that even Captain America's enhanced senses barely caught it: a sharply accented cry on the comm — " _Tony!_ " — and an ebony blur even swifter that Obsidian's previous flight, curving up around the shield close enough that Steve could actually hear the hiss of the Dragon's energy bleeding through Obsidian's feed. A split second later the robot's car-crushing hands caught hold of the humans by a bicep each and snatched them both out of their death-dive, soaring out of the Dragon's thanotic field at a terrible speed and turning back toward the Helicarrier as Obsidian demanded: " _Tony! Tony, can you hear me?_ " 

"I — I —" He sounded drunk — and worse, wrecked with pain. "I'm gonna barf in the suit. Oh, _fuck_." 

Another groan in a different voice, clearly Bruce, and Steve's heart settled back toward its normal rhythm. At least they were both still alive. But —  

Thor raised his hammer again with an Asgardian warrior's battle-cry, bringing another crushing blow down upon the enemy — an impressive display of power, full of sound and fury, but ultimately signifying nothing. Steve lowered the binoculars slowly, staring at the lightning display with eyes that concealed tactical calculations as quick and as agile as Tony's android partner — and just as useless against the monster before him, because no matter which way he turned the remaining options open to him he kept coming up with a big fat zero. 

The Avengers had failed. 

And when the Council came that that conclusion in the next few minutes, it would wipe them all off the face of the Earth. 


	5. Sacrifice

It took Fury a lot less time to figure things out: his query in Steve's earpiece was immediate. "Captain?" 

Steve swallowed to get some moisture on a tongue gone dry. "They… didn't make it, Sir. The Dragon is intact." 

"And pulling up its lines," Fury almost cursed. "Get your team out of there!" 

"Sir," Steve protested, even as Agent Hill's voice boomed through the carrier's general intercom (" _All personnel, commence Wave One Evacuation! I repeat, all personnel, commence —_ "), "there may still be something we can —" 

"Captain, that's a —" 

" _He's right, Director,_ " a dry tenor interrupted urgently — Obsidian's, as he streaked in over the carrier's deck and slowed sharply, curving down toward Steve and Thor's position. " _Look at the scans I've just uploaded to your personal desktop!_ " 

Steve stared at him as he alighted, setting Tony and Bruce down on their feet to his left and his right; both men promptly collapsed to their hands and knees, and Tony popped his faceplate a quarter second before puking explosively. Bruce tore off his face mask with a visibly shaking hand, and his revealed skin was a clammy grey mess. 

"I couldn't," he gasped, swallowing hard and shuddering, "the Other Guy couldn't —" 

And then the Other Guy did, blossoming like poisonous green rage, ripping the pressure suit to pieces with the effortless power of his rebirth. For once it didn't attract much attention: everybody on the deck who wasn't under Steve's command was scrambling to carry out the evacuation protocol, and even the Hulk's thunderous roar as he turned his murderous eyes to Steve wasn't going to distract them. 

Steve's mind was racing, mapping their new tactical situation. Out over the water, the fighter jets were pulling back and most of them were hightailing it out of the zone, leaving only five flights of four to keep what might well be a fatal last watch at the two mile range. In the next fifteen minutes the Helicarrier would evacuate twenty percent of its personnel to the southeastern shore, and an additional twenty percent in the fifteen minutes after that — if they had that long, which Steve doubted. Fury wasn't scheduled to go out until the third wave, which had a snowball's chance in Hell of actually beating the — 

Steve raised steady fingertips to his earpiece. He had one aircraft that he could allocate to the evacuation efforts. "Natasha, bring the jet around and start loading carrier personnel." 

"Captain?" Formal, cautious: _You do realize you're signing your own death warrant?_   

"I know what I'm doing." He glanced down at Tony, who was still yarking energetically, then up at the Hulk, whose eyes narrowed when Steve met his savage gaze. "We're good here. Do it." 

"Roger." 

On another comm channel, Fury was speaking: "That's not much of a chance." 

" _Do you have anything better to offer?_ " Obsidian was down on one knee beside Tony, a slender black hand resting on the shoulder of the billionaire's armour as if to offer comfort. Tony ignored him: the fountain of vomit had stopped, but he was still straining hard enough to bring up his socks. The robot looked up at Steve and cocked its head to one side in a gesture almost pleading, even though it was still speaking to Fury: " _Give me five minutes — five minutes that could save this vessel's crew and hundreds of thousands of lives._ " 

A pause crackling with tension. "You've got sixty seconds. Whatever you've got in mind, do it fast." 

" _Thank you, Director,_ " the android nodded, straightening to his full height with that eery perfectly oiled grace. " _I'm on it_." He looked down at Tony, who was now coughing and sputtering, then up at the Hulk, who was flexing his massive hands like he was ready to smash anyone who got within range. " _Keep him out of the air, would you? He can't even see straight, much less fly straight._ " 

The Hulk growled, but he also grinned, and with a final nod in Steve's direction KITT took a step back and activated his repulsors, rocketing into the cloud-streaked autumn sky before turning west over the lake.  

"Oh _God_ ," Tony groaned, and tried to stand. The Hulk's hard hand between his shoulders sent him right back down again. "Now I —" A dry heave. "Now I know what getting hit by a truck _really_ feels like…" 

Steve was only paying attention to Tony's histrionics with one quarter of his awareness: half his attention was on the Dragon, which was now rising while Thor's lightning broke and skittered uselessly over its energy shields, and the rest was on what was coming through his earpiece, where Tony's android was speaking briskly: " _Wildcat Squadron, this is Obsidian on a Mach intercept with the bogey, proceeding on heading four sixty by two twenty, copy?_ " 

Lieutenant Emily Chalmer's drawling contralto responded: "Roger that. Got a flight on your six, Obsidian." 

" _That's not —_ " 

"Fury's orders." 

" _Ah,_ " KITT mused wryly. " _Well, then — the target may not like that very much. Stand ready for incoming fire._ " 

"Roger that," Chalmer confirmed again, and Steve's enhanced vision could pick out four fighters disengaging from the remaining cloud to fall in behind KITT as he arrowed toward his target. The threads of green beneath the Dragon had vanished completely, its fuel lines fully retracted, and Steve could see that it was starting to pick up speed as it rose. Thor's second attack flickered out and Steve could hear the demi-god draw a sharp breath as he cocked back his hammer to generate a third. 

"Wait." He held up his hand, trusting his own instincts, and ignored Thor's puzzled glance. "Hold off a second." 

" _Thanotic field currently holding steady at five hundred and fifty-three metres,"_ Obsidian was saying. _"Keep your wings clean, I'm going in._ " 

"Roger," Chalmers responded. 

Steve raised the binoculars. He saw the flashes of energy fire before he saw Obsidian, darting and swooping into close range again just above the Dragon's shields. There was a subliminal hum in his earpiece, the audible trace of data being streamed back to the Helicarrier's own computer system from Obsdian's brain.  

A frown tightened Steve's brow. It couldn't just be a recon run. Fury wouldn't have — 

Then, sudden and fiercely exultant: " _There it is again — a variance in the shield harmonics when that particular cannon fires! Half a metre wide, I can —_ " His voice turned abruptly commanding, more authoritative than Steve had ever heard it: " _Clear the zone! I repeat — all aircraft, clear the zone! I'm going_ ** _in_** _, and things are about to get_ ** _very_** _hot!_ " 

"No!" Tony's choked gasp brought Steve's head around. Iron Man was levering himself onto his feet, shaky but determined, his breathless voice a carrier wave of outrage: "KITT — don't you —!" 

In Steve's ear, a chittering burst of static, a sizzling hissing sound — and then dead air. 

JARVIS's voice on the comm, from Tony's suit: " _Sir, KITT is inside the Dragon's shields. I've lost the uplink._ " 

Simultaneously, Chalmer's announcement: "We've lost Obsidian. Repeat: we have lost Obsidian." 

Tony slammed his faceplate shut and tried to take flight. The Hulk was faster, wrapping massive hands around his arms and pinning him down with immoveable strength — preventing him from racing to certain death. Through the comm Steve could hear the agonized rasp of his breathing, fast and hot. 

A beat, then Chalmers again: "No, wait — he's _inside_ the shield. He's —" 

"JARVIS!" Tony was yelling now, writhing in the Hulk's hold while his boot repulsors fired against the deck in a bright blaze of sparks and melting metal: "Get him back to New York! _Now!_ Initiate emergency override and download!" 

" _Sir, the uplink is no longer —_ " 

" _Do_ it!" 

With a touch of his fingertips Steve was able to tighten the binoculars' focus. The high-tech S.H.I.E.L.D. optics compensated for the tiny motions of his hand and the relative motion of the Dragon: he could see, through the behemoth's shimmering green energy field, the midnight silhouette of Obsidian settling onto the largest node on the Dragon's back while fine threads of interior weapon fire struck him from all sides, flaring red on his molecular bonded shell but lost in the white-hot glow of the armour at his back. He was dropping to one knee, putting his right hand on the node — 

And Chalmers, voice sharp and urgent: "All flights, clear the zone! _Clear the zone, he's —!_ " 

Beneath the android's armoured palm, a flare of radiant energy that rapidly expanded to blank out Steve's field of vision. He whipped the binoculars down in time to see that whiteness fill the interior space of the Dragon's shields, which held intact for two desperate seconds before failing completely — and releasing the full force of the explosion within, a catastrophic and lethal blaze of green-gold fire. 

Tony screamed, the shriek of a man having his living heart torn from his body: " ** _KITT!_** " He was giving it everything he had — but not even Iron Man was a match for the Hulk.  

In Steve's ear, Fury's grim voice murmured almost in wonder: "Well, I'll be damned." 

Burning, shattered from within, wracked by smaller explosions, the Dragon twisted and crashed into the lake in a blaze of glorious destruction. Sheets of water and clouds of white steam geysered into the air, but through the fire and the smoke Steve could see one piece of debris in particular, a humanoid piece, blasted clear and arcing across the shining sky without a trace of its own motive power.  

Tony screamed again, an inarticulate howl of agony — and the Hulk let him go. He cracked Mach 1 in the space of a heartbeat, a burst of acceleration both whole-hearted and hopeless, and nowhere near fast enough to beat Obsidian's impact with the water nearly seven hundred yards away from the Dragon's rapidly sinking corpse. 

Agent Hill was speaking again (" _All personnel, stand down. Wave One Evacuation is cancelled. I repeat, all personnel —_ "), but Steve barely paid heed. His attention was focussed on Tony as Iron Man entered the lake in a clean dive in pursuit of his mechanized sidekick, to rocket out less than three seconds later bearing Obsidian in his arms. "Oh God," Steve heard him whisper, a barely articulated hitch of breath, "come on, baby, _no…_ "  

"Steve?" Natasha queried. 

"It's…" He drew a deep breath, turned to meet Thor's glad but sorrowing gaze, and nodded once. "We did it. Stand down." A conclusion being reached by everybody else on the flight deck, apparently: the scramble to abandon ship had come to a halt, a sea of incredulous stares at the Dragon's sudden and cataclysmic downfall rapidly giving way to exultation as they realized they'd won. "Director? We're good, right?" 

"We're good, Captain." No hesitation, and for the first time in hours the knot of ready-to-die tension at the small of Steve's back unravelled. There'd be no radioactive cloud unleashed on innocent civilian populations today, thank God. 

And it hadn't cost much at all, in comparison to the price Steve had been willing to put on the table. But watching Tony swoop down to the carrier with his burden cradled in his arms, Steve had to concede that victory might have cost more than enough.  

Tony lowered his robot to the deck so carefully, pieces of its seared black finish flaking off and skittering away across the carrier's metal plating on the brisk autumn wind as its maker laid it flat on its back, its scanner a shattered ruin and poisonous-looking smoke seeping out of its chest. It was more or less intact, only missing a few segments of its armour, but to Steve nothing had ever looked more dead than that battered humanoid shape. His gorge rose in his throat: only a machine, maybe, but it had a way of winning the sympathy of people it met.  

Tony popped his faceplate to reveal a deathly pale face, gazing down at Obsidian's body with laser intensity. "JARVIS, give me a diagnostic." 

" _I am unable to perform one. The android's power levels are at zero, and its arc reactor has been destroyed._ " A pause, then a strangely softer inflection: " _In addition, the electromagnetic pulse from the explosion was four point six times more intense than Obsidian was designed to withstand. Even if power remained in its capacitors, no data could have possibly survived._ " A beat. " _He's gone, sir._ " 

"No." Steve saw it hit home — and that Tony had already known. He shook his head anyway. "No, that can't…" But the protest died in his throat. He _knew_. The knowledge shone in his dark eyes like terror, or perhaps just a little bit like love. 

" _I'm sorry, sir._ " 

All around them the Helicarrier's crew was cheering and whooping and slapping each other on the back beneath the sunlit sky, and on the comm Steve could hear similar jubilation from all points. And why not? The Dragon was dead, and hundreds of thousands — no, make that millions — of lives had just been saved.  

They'd won. But on this small patch of the Helicarrier's deck, just big enough to contain Steve Rogers, Thor, the Hulk and Tony Stark, the weight of one man's grief seemed to turn the air itself as black as night.  


	6. Shock

It was the Hulk's bellow that finally broke the pall of silence — no, that _shattered_ it, and it was his fury that buckled the deck when he slammed both knotted fists a foot and a half into the reinforced metal superstructure of the carrier. He glared down at Obsidian as he roared, and when the exhalation finally ran out he kept staring, each bull-elephant snort of air that followed both enraged and expectant. 

"He's not waking up, Big Guy." Tony still sounded like he'd been punched in the gut — or stabbed, the blade just beginning to twist. He slid one red-gloved hand under the nape of the robot's neck, held it that way for a long moment, then bent further to ease his arm underneath the dead machine's shoulders. "Not now, not —"  

A coughing growl, and a dangerous hunch further forward — just before the transformation shifted polarity much earlier than usual. Within seconds it was Bruce standing there naked, his dark-eyed gaze still directed at Obsidian but swiftly going unfocussed; he opened his mouth, made a choking sound, and started to go down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Steve moved to catch him, but Thor was marginally faster. 

"Easy, Bruce," the demi-god intoned, wrapping both arms around the fainting physicist to hold him upright. "Easy, shield-brother. The battle is over, and we are victorious." 

"… Tony… he…" Bruce leaned against Thor while fighting to stay conscious, his broad face twisted with determination as his eyelids flickered and closed.  

"Is alive," Thor almost crooned, "and likely to remain so, for this day at least. Come, let me bear you to a place of rest." He bent, scooped his muscular right arm under Bruce's legs, and lifted him effortlessly before turning an emphatic gaze on Steve. "They both have need of a healer. We must take them —" 

"No," Tony interrupted in a harsher voice, drawing their attention as he rose to his feet in turn, now carrying the limp remains of Obsidian. "I've got to — the lab. I'm going back to the lab." 

"Stark," Steve ordered, still in battle-mode, "you're going to the —" 

"Don't," Tony rasped, his eyes too huge in his ashen face. "Just… don't, Steve. Do _not_ fuck with me right now." He started across the deck like he was being held together with barbed wire, completely ignoring the quinjet coming in for a landing less than ten yards away and the way Clint and Natasha were staring at him through its windows. "Go on, get him to the Infirmary. I've got work to do." 

Steve watched him go for a few seconds, baffled by the sheer intensity of the pain he radiated, before glancing at Thor, who was also gazing after Tony with such compassion that when Steve opened his mouth he initially intended to ask just what the hell this was all about. Instead he said: "Take him to the Infirmary and tell them to check him over thoroughly. I'm…" And he nodded at Tony's back. 

Thor nodded in acknowledgement, speaking in a much lower voice. "I have seen warriors in such a state of mind before, following a great loss in battle. They bear careful watching. I will come to him as soon as I've seen to Bruce's care." 

"Thanks." He watched for a moment as Thor started off with Bruce still suspended in his arms, then turned to follow Tony — only to be intercepted by Clint and Natasha. 

"How bad is it?" she demanded, with a glance in Tony's direction.  

"According to JARVIS, he's dead. Something about the EMP pulse being more than he was built to take." 

She cursed in Russian, low and vehement, and exchanged a look with Clint, who simply nodded. "We have to go and make our reports, but Tony — he shouldn't be left alone, not after this. Can you —?" 

"I'll stay with him," Steve assured them, a bit uneasy — and starting to get slightly pissed off — that there seemed to be a whole level of meaning to these conversations that he just wasn't getting. "He's going back to the lab, he said — and Thor's promised to come by as soon as he's got Bruce settled with the medics." 

"Thanks. If he gets violent, don't call security — call us, okay?" 

"If he…?" Steve scowled, thinking that maybe he should be a bit insulted that she didn't think that he, Captain America, couldn't handle an unarmoured Tony Stark with both hands tied behind his back.  

Natasha's green eyes were strangely soft as she glanced at Tony's retreating back again. "Promise me, Steve. Please?" 

"I promise." He didn't hesitate for a second, because he'd seen enough in the Second World War to understand what she was getting at. 

She inclined her head in thanks and turned to stride away, followed by Clint, who cast a final enigmatic glance after Tony before following her. It wasn't until Steve was at Tony's side again, being completely ignored, that he realized something else anomalous: that Tony had never, _ever_ called him by his first name before, in spite of having had ample opportunities to do so for over a year. 

Maybe he was regretting it, and that was why he was being so resolutely silent now. But that didn't pass the smell test: Tony wasn't acting like someone caught in an awkward social situation, he was behaving like a man who'd been stricken a crippling blow, maybe the kind that amputated a limb in one clean stroke. Steve had seen that kind of disconnection from one's surroundings too many times in the War not to recognize it instantly in the twenty-first century, or to fail to believe for an instant that both Thor and Natasha were right: Tony was liable to collapse at any second, or to start screaming and climbing the walls. 

The 'why' didn't really matter. Later on it would, when Tony started to really process whatever the hell was going on inside that genius-level brain of his, but for now he just needed a warm familiar body in close proximity. And even though they'd had their knock-down drag-out arguments in the past, Steve was more than willing to be the touchstone that kept this hot-blooded little man from spinning completely into the red. 

So he followed Tony back to the lab and cleared a table for him when he nodded at it, standing watch as he laid Obsidian down and and arranged the robot's limbs neatly. Tony scarcely took time to open and strip off his armour before calling up JARVIS on the portable interface unit he'd brought from New York City and starting to gather the tools he needed, keeping up a stream of terse scientific chatter with his surviving A.I. while Steve stayed the hell out of his way — but close, always easily within Tony's line of sight. He could tolerate being treated like a piece of furniture, could tolerate it easily, because the bottom line was that Tony was part of Steve's unit and that made Tony his responsibility — no matter what. 


	7. Mystery

Now that he had a task to perform Tony worked quickly and purposefully. He pulled a viewscreen into position across the table from him, then removed the remaining front segments of the robot's armour (some of which simply came apart in his hands) and set them neatly aside before delving into its inner workings with the various tools he'd collected, all while narrating his actions in a low level voice, presumably for JARVIS's benefit. 

"Initiating surge buffer test. Level one. Level two. Level three. Negative. All overloaded. Let's try the pattern buffer... level one... level two..." 

"You're sure all the capacitor arrays are fried?" " _Positive, sir — none of the systems tested are holding a charge…_ " 

"Give me a schematic on the burn pattern in the Lambda circuit cluster." " _I'm afraid this is the best I can do with this set of equipment…_ " 

"This complex is a write-off. Moving on to 201-C… 201-D… 201-E… 201-F…" 

Steve knew it certainly wasn't intended for him, because Tony was still acting as if he didn't even exist. The inventor might have been a mechanic taking apart a car for all the emotion his voice or his actions conveyed, but his face, especially the cant of his eyebrows, and his eyes…  

Those eyes would haunt Steve for a long time to come, and he wasn't even sure exactly what their bitter desperate gleam was conveying. By the time Thor showed up over forty-five minutes later all he had figured out was that is was some species of obsession, coupled with that on-the-edge-of-breaking shock that might still turn ugly at any moment. 

"The Director summoned me to tell my tale of the battle," Thor made excuse in a low voice, coming to stand at Steve's side. His brilliant eyes were fixed on Tony, who was paying the new arrival no more attention than the man who'd escorted him here. "And he's instructed me to summon you to give your own account at once." 

Steve frowned. "Tony —" 

"— will be well watched and guarded, I promise you." He laid a large warm hand on Steve's upper arm and smiled reassuringly. "I have seen such grief before, many times. Whatever happens, he will not be alone." 

"That's what doesn't make sense here," Steve muttered, his frown deepening. "Grief? Over a machine?"  

Thor's expression shifted to one of lordly surprise. "Do you mean —" A glance at Tony, then back to Steve again, his blond eyebrows rising. "You do not know?" 

"Know what?" Steve demanded, relieved to finally be getting a straight answer out of somebody. "I know he's spent a lot of time and effort making Obsidian the best possible operative, but that doesn't —" 

"Captain Rogers." From the ceiling, the voice of Nick Fury cut into their conversation mid-sentence.  

He looked up reflexively. Who knew whether or not Fury could see him? "Director?" 

"I expect to see you on the bridge in the next three minutes. Don't keep me waiting." 

"Yes, Sir." He glanced at Thor one last time, considered carrying on the rest of this conversation at top speed, then rejected the idea: Thor didn't really speak at more than one pace, which Tony had once labelled Shakespearean Declaiming. "Stay with him. If anything happens, call me."

 The Asgardian nodded. "None other," he promised, and Steve set out to obey his CO's orders. 

************************************** 

He'd done this so many times before that he'd already composed his report more or less on autopilot, and once he was in Fury's presence it came out in an efficient and perfectly ordered flow of words. The Director lounged in his chair with his gloved fingers interlaced just below his chin, watching Steve intently as he stood at parade attention and laid out the events of the battle from his perspective, only reacting with a little incline of his chin and three words of praise when the account wrapped up. "Well done, Captain." 

"Thank you, Sir." He shifted his weight a little, not entirely comfortable with the taste of his next words. "But I wasn't the one who took down the Dragon. None of the Avengers were. Not the living breathing ones, anyway." 

Fury raised his eyebrows and waited. 

"What did he see out there?" Steve finally asked.  

The Director sighed fractionally and sat up straighter. "He picked up the shield harmonics variance around a cannon on the Dragon's starboard flank during his first flight pass. Every time that cannon fired it created a limited shield gap lasting less than three quarters of a second — some kind of fault in the weapon's calibration, probably. It wasn't much, but he shot the scans over to my desktop along with a set of calculations proving that if he played his cards right, he could fly through it without getting himself turned into slag by the beam that created the opening — if he was lucky." 

"Or good." 

Fury nodded. "Take your pick. Along with a second set of data indicating that if he could get inside the shield he'd try to overload its systems with an energy burst that would drain him dry. We all saw how well that worked out." 

"Stark's trying to bring him back." 

Fury looked thoughtful. "If he succeeds, there'll be nobody more pleased than me — and the rest of the world won't be far behind. There were news crews with eyes in the skies and they saw a lot more than they should have. HLN is already running a 'Death of an Avenger' feature in constant rotation, and the other networks are going just as crazy." 

Steve considered that for a moment, no longer really surprised by the predatory quickness of modern mainstream media, but not liking it much either.  

"Dismissed," Fury said, and turned his attention to the computer screen at his right. 

Automatically Steve turned to go — then hesitated, and half-turned back. "Sir?" 

"Yes, Captain?" Not even looking up.  

"I —" It wasn't his place to give orders to the Director. A suggestion, on the other hand… "I don't think you'd get much out of Stark right now. He needs time." _Although why, I have no idea._ "If I could make a —" 

"I have no intention of disturbing him until he's finished doing what he needs to do." His gaze rose to Steve again, one corner of his mouth curving. "You think I haven't seen this kind of thing before?"

 Steve cocked his head in undisguised puzzlement. " _What_ kind of thing, Sir?" 

He not-quite-sighed again, looking wry. "If I ever completely figure it out, Captain, you'll be the first to know. In the meantime, keep a close eye on him." 

And because Steve recognized that tone of voice from his CO — _Really, dismissed_ — he simply indicated his understanding of the order with a nod and took his leave, heading back to Lab Ten.  

************************************** 

When he got there he received yet another surprise. 

"Bruce?" He stopped just inside the door and stared in perplexity at the short scientist, who was standing in the far corner by the window engrossed in murmuring conversation with Thor. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in the —" 

As Steve approached around the edge of the lab, giving Tony a wide berth, Bruce smiled ever so slightly and managed to look even smaller in his obvious exhaustion. He was wearing a fresh set of civilian clothes, neatly pressed but comfortable. "Yeah, funny thing… when I start telling people that I really want to leave a place, they don't waste time standing in my way."

 Steve wasn't about to be put off that easily. "After what you've been through, you really should —" 

"— be lying down somewhere with enough painkillers in me to drop a bull rhino?" He shrugged. "This takes priority. I was just explaining to Thor what happened out there — or what should have happened, anyway." 

Trying to push Bruce to do anything, especially now, when he looked on a thin edge himself, wasn't a gamble that Steve felt like taking at this moment. He elected to follow the conversational flow. "What _should_ have happened?" 

Bruce nodded. "Normally KITT would have uploaded his core program to the private server at Stark Tower in the event that the Obsidian android was badly damaged or destroyed — but he couldn't, because he was inside the Dragon's shields when he caused the overload and couldn't get a signal. The explosion itself caused all the damage we're seeing, but it was the electromagnetic pulse that killed him by erasing his program." 

"But there is a chance that Tony will be able to resurrect him," Thor not-quite asked, his gaze turning to the man still obsessively picking apart the robot's corpse and talking to JARVIS as if he was completely alone.  

Bruce shook his head tightly. "Not a hope in Hell." 

"Then why's he still trying?" Steve demanded, following Thor's gaze and liking the expression he saw on Tony's face now even less. It was the glazed stare of a man running himself to death, but when he turned back to Bruce and Thor he saw something even less explicable: they were both looking at him almost with… pity? No, not quite. But close.  

They exchanged a glance of their own, and Bruce shook his head again, this time with a hint of a sad smile. "I don't think he has any choice but to try." 

"That doesn't answer my question." 

Another shared glance. "It is not meet for us to speak of such things," Thor said firmly. 

Steve upgraded his frown to an outright scowl. "Look, if you two know something I don't —" 

"It's a twenty-first century thing, Steve." Bruce shook his head again, almost to himself, looking thoughtful. "Or maybe a twenty-second century thing, for the rest of the world. Tony's always been more than a little ahead of his time. 

"It is Tony's wyrd," Thor added, "and his alone to explain to you — if he chooses." Which only, in Steve's opinion, made matters even more inscrutable, but Thor was turning his full attention to Bruce. "You hunger and thirst," he stated: Bruce always burned insane amounts of energy when he transformed into his alter ego and shifted back. "I will fetch us food and drink. We may well have a long watch ahead of us." 

Bruce nodded, and moved away toward an equipment-laden table while Thor headed for the door and the commissary. Which left Steve standing alone,  still not entirely sure what the hell had just happened — or not happened, as the case might be. 


	8. Break

It didn't take long for Thor to come back with three commissary workers in tow, carrying trays laden with sandwiches, soups, coffee cups and milk cartons, which they set on the room's corner table (the only one equipped with chairs) before beating a hasty retreat while pointedly not looking at Bruce. The physicist didn't seem bothered in the least. Steve knew differently, but saw no point in bringing it up. 

Tony didn't say anything: he had his head down, his mind and his hands completely engaged in his pointless attempts to recover something from Obsidian's blasted systems, and he didn't react when Bruce approached to tell him, gently, that food had arrived. Bruce didn't press the issue. He simply took his seat with Steve and Thor, and together the three of them proceeded to demolish the spread with a speed and thoroughness that only two hyper-accelerated metabolisms and a demi-god's appetite could manage, although Bruce was careful to set aside a shrink-wrapped ham sandwich and a cardboard bowl of cream of mushroom soup. They didn't talk while they concentrated on fuelling their respective machines, an attitude toward food that made Steve feel oddly comfortable, bringing up as it did memories of many meals shared with fellow soldiers in the field during the War. In active combat every motion and action was economical, no ounce of energy wasted on non-essentials. Eat, sleep, piss, shit, fight, repeat. There was something clean about it, almost soothing in its simplicity.

And they _were_ under threat, even though the Dragon was dead — with Tony Stark as the battlefield. On one side stood his fellow Avengers, and on the other lurked whatever stresses were bearing down on him like a juggernaut, threatening to tear him apart. It wasn't like Steve didn't have experience with comforting distraught men under fire; he just felt a helluva lot better when he actually knew the shape of the enemy he was facing. 

Devouring sandwiches and soup, swallowing hot sweet coffee, he tackled the question again in the privacy of his own mind. Obsidian was broken — no, that wasn't the point. As far as Tony was concerned Obsidian was _dead_ , its simulation of life traded for thousands or millions of real human lives, and for some reason Tony just couldn't let it go. Steve would have expected Tony to be profoundly annoyed by its loss — after all, he'd put almost nine months of work into making it the best operative possible, and invested a lot of time in convincing the rest of the team that a machine could be depended upon to have their backs and to act intelligently in the heat of combat. What didn't make sense was this desperation that seemed to possess Tony in the aftermath, and the ferocity with which he was throwing himself into the futile effort to resurrect KITT from Obsidian's burned-out wreckage. 

Steve had seen men throw themselves on grenades and into machine gun fire to save their friends in combat. He knew the emotional timbre of sacrifice, and he had no doubt that if Tony could have traded his life for KITT's he would do it without a second's hesitation. There'd never been any question in Steve's mind that KITT was important to him, although in the past he'd always assumed it was the attachment of a scientist to a particularly successful experiment of which he was exceptionally proud, or of a covetous man to an especially valuable piece of personal property. 

This was nothing like that. This went deeper, in pulses of heart's-blood and the scream of a white-hot blade on raw nerves. This was monomania to the point that even Bruce's presence, which Tony had never failed to acknowledge in the past, didn't register; to the point that food and coffee, when offered by his best friend on the team, didn't even rate a flicker of recognition; to the point that when an Agent showed up and tried to get some answers out of Tony, probably looking to score points with Fury, she didn't even get through three questions — Tony uttered monosyllabic grunts in response to the first two, and did his level best to fling a socket wrench through her skull before she'd quite finished uttering the third. She immediately hightailed it without another word, leaving the lab to settle back into the tense silence of three men waiting and one man teetering on the breathless point of breaking. 

Bruce went back to doing something scientific with a tableful of equipment and one of the hanging screens, his personal version of twiddling his thumbs to pass the time. Steve settled for sitting and talking quietly with Thor, who was quite happy to regale him with tales of monsters he'd fought in the past — demons, ghasts, giant snakes, and the walking dead — earnestly told, with a charismatic flare that occupied Steve to the point that when he suddenly realized that Tony had come to a complete stop it was something of a surprise. He looked around sharply, Thor broke off his narrative mid-sentence, and Bruce was already moving, coming out from behind his workstation to slowly approach the now-immobile man standing over his opened robot, tools still in hand, staring down at it with unblinking eyes. 

"Tony." Sometimes Bruce had the gentlest voice Steve had ever heard, from man or woman. "Tony…?" 

"I can't." He gave his head a small stiff shake, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "I… can't. There's nothing left. Nothing to…" 

Bruce came to a halt five feet in front of the table, looking directly into Tony's face, at the lowered brown eyes that wouldn't rise to meet his own. "Tony, maybe you should —?" 

"I _can't_." He sounded like a man speaking in razor blade fragments instead of human breath, letting the tools fall from his fingers in favour of clutching the table's edge, all color draining from his face. "It's. Gone. He's _gone_." 

" _Sir,_ " JARVIS said, and in his artificial voice Steve thought he actually detected an inflection of sympathy. " _You've been awake forty-seven hours and thirteen minutes. I would strongly recommend —_ " 

Tony shook his head again, this time as if twisting his neck against the grip of a much stronger enemy, a hectic spot of color appearing high on each cheekbone. "No," he choked out, this time over ground glass: " _No._ I'm not. Not leaving him." A harsh bark of laughter, pushing the verge of hysteria. "If I leave him, he'll really be dead. So. _Not_ happening." 

" _Sir, your presence or absence will make absolutely no —_ " 

"Mute," Tony barked, and JARVIS fell silent. His gaze, glittering too bright, jerked upward to find Bruce. "So. How about you? You got anything to say?" 

Bruce lowered his blunt chin in a small solemn bow, and took a pointed step backward.  

"Good," Tony said, "that's _aces_ ," and closed his eyes tightly. They didn't overflow. Steve was glad, for his sake. "Just…" 

He said nothing more, just stood there with his head lowered and his breathing harsh around the glowing device embedded in his chest. Bruce returned to his station on silent feet. Thor reached out to touch Steve's forearm, caught his eyes with a nod, and rose to silently take his leave. And after several more seconds Steve, as accustomed as he was to death and to tragedy and to the various prices men paid to win wars, had to get up and step into the outer hallway, feeling almost choked by the poisonous intensity of Tony's silent agony. 

He was leaning back against the corridor wall beside the lab door, staring up at the ceiling and trying yet again to marshall his thoughts and impressions into a pattern that made sense, when approaching footsteps followed by a feminine Southern drawl — "Captain Rogers?" — diverted his attention. He looked around at the five uniformed Air Force members closing on his position, then down into the round dark face of the officer at the head of the little party. 

"Yes, Lieutenant —?" 

"Emily Chalmer, Sir." She nodded at the four men behind her. "And these are the pilots who had Obsidian's six when he slew the Dragon — Anwar, Preston, Graham and Dauville. We were told this is where we should come to pay our respects." 

The knot in Steve's throat thickened. "This isn't —" 

And then, out of that place of sure but sometimes inexplicable instinct that he'd learned to trust implicitly, came the certainty: _Tony wouldn't mind_. So instead of sending them packing Steve straightened, putting on his Captain America persona like a well-fitting glove even though his cowl was currently stripped back, and nodded at the lab door. "He's just inside. Follow me." 

"Thank you, Sir," Chalmer responded, and did exactly that. 


	9. Tribute

As he re-entered the lab Steve called out in his best official tone: "Stark. You've got visitors." 

"Tell 'em I'm busy." His voice was a dull mutter, his eyes still closed, both hands still gripping the table's edge beside Obsidian's flayed-open left arm. 

"They've come to pay their respects." _Come on, Tony, listen to me. Hear what I'm saying. Come back, just a little bit. Take the first step out of whatever the hell's got you wrapped up so tight!_  

He opened his eyes, at least. "Respects…" And at last he tore his gaze away from his sidekick's remains to meet the calm gaze of the short boxy squad leader, his left eyebrow peaking in an unspoken question. 

"Lieutenant Emily Chalmers, Sir — and the four pilots who had Obsidian's back when he made the Jesus play." She indicated them each in turn. "Dawud Anwar, James Preston, Dudley Graham and Eric Dauville. He saved the lives of a lot of people today. We wanted to properly thank him for that." 

"Sorry, Chalmer, but you're about two hours too late." His voice was low and rough, and there was a dangerous burn in his nearly black eyes. "Or didn't whoever sent you here mention that he was dead before he even hit the water?" 

Chalmer's serene demeanour never wavered. "We're well aware of that, Sir — and nobody sent us here. We came because it's the right thing to do." Her gaze dropped from Tony's eyes to the machine in front of him, cooly evaluating it. "He wasn't operated by remote at all, was he, Sir?" 

Tony shook his head. "No. He was completely autonomous." 

Chalmer nodded. "In that case, we'd be honoured if you'd give us permission to adopt the name Obsidian for our squad. Director Fury has already signed off on it — all we need is your approval." 

"I…" Steve could almost see the wheels spinning inside Tony's skull as his still-shocky mind processed that utterly unexpected offer —and then, incredibly, a crooked smile tugged at his grim mouth. Steve promptly congratulated himself on his instincts. "His real name was KITT, and… sure, go ahead. He would have liked that." 

"Thank you, Sir. We'll make sure that what he did is never forgotten." A tiny nod to the men behind her, and all five of them snapped to attention and saluted what remained of the android that had saved so many lives. "Is there anything else we should know?" 

Tony's breath hitched in his chest, and for an instant something soft and even more incandescent than rage shone in his dark eyes. "Just — that he was as intelligent as he was brave, and he was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful thing on the face of this whole damned Earth. Be sure you include that information when you get drunk enough to start toasting his memory, okay?" 

"We will." She stepped forward, holding out her hand to Tony over Obsidian's chest. "Good luck, Sir — and thank you. For everything." 

And damned if Tony didn't reach out to shake her hand, although for once the famous Stark eloquence seemed to have deserted him, because all he said in return was: "Yeah." 

It seemed to be enough. Chalmer stepped back, turned to Steve with a curt nod — "Captain." — and led her men back out of the lab again, leaving Steve and Bruce staring after her, then over at Tony. 

Who was still smiling, although it was an image that could have been pasted under the word 'bittersweet' in the dictionary, emphasis on the 'bitter'. His right hand hand dropped to Obsidian's cleaved-open faceplate, curving around the smooth swoop of what had once been its fixed approximation of a human jawline. 

"You hear that, baby?" Proud and tender and aching. "I always said you were a hero. Now the whole world knows it too."  

Steve had to look away again, deeply conscious that he was witnessing something both painfully intimate and resolutely inexplicable. Bruce caught his gaze in passing, and the physicist's smile was composed of a sorrow both warmer and far less complicated. 

Steve moved to the windows overlooking the belly of the carrier and turned his gaze on the bustling activity of its personnel, not really seeing what he was looking at, only conscious that Tony deserved his privacy but could not safely be left alone — not yet, at any rate. And that's where he was when Fury showed up about an hour later, bearing contraband alcohol to lure Tony into a state of mind perhaps marginally more wholesome than his silent unblinking vigil, standing over his partner's corpse like the Raven in a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, his darkened eyes full of a single bleak word: _Nevermore_. 


	10. Regret

Alcohol for the purposes of intoxication was a forbidden substance on the Helicarrier, as Tony himself had pointed out, but when the man in charge pulls out a bottle and starts pouring rounds… well, a smart soldier shuts up and drinks. So Steve did, and it wasn't like Tony Stark had ever given a flying damn about regulations anyway. 

Tony put the whiskey away like a man dying of thirst, and it hit his exhausted merely human body like a Mack truck. When he started slurring savage sentence fragments about how it should have been him and how he was going to find the people responsible for the Dragon and tear their throats out with his teeth, Steve just nodded and kept matching him drink for drink, while Fury kept pouring and Bruce watched with silent compassion. The Director's strategy wasn't hard to figure out: keep Tony drinking until he collapsed, then haul him off to bed and hope he'd sleep off the worst of both the intoxication and the initial shock, waking up some span of hours later in serious pain but with a clearer head. It was a line of attack Steve had seen work numerous times before, although he'd never had the occasion to make use of it personally. 

But for such a small man Tony had a wicked tolerance for alcohol — and evidently balls the size of church bells, because he was on his seventh glass and still upright when he looked Fury in the eyes with naked belligerence and hissed: "An' you let him go… you — fuckin' _let him go!_ " 

Fury's response was immediate and unruffled: "If I hadn't, none of us would be sitting here talking about this. Besides, you should know better than anyone how good he was at following orders he didn't like." 

"Fucking straight," Tony muttered, and took half his glass in one swallow before a fond smile suddenly curved his full lips and lit up his eyes. "God! If he thought you were full of shit, he'd just —" And just as suddenly the light went pitch-black with a moan. "Oh. Oh, God — I could've stopped him! If I hadn't…" 

"No, Tony. You couldn't." Bruce spoke for the first time, his voice like a warm hand extended to clasp a shoulder hunched in agony. "He didn't tell you what he was going to do. You didn't know —" 

Tony slammed his open hand down on the tabletop, his eyes blazing. "I _should've_ known!" he shouted, eyes blazing with his self-directed rage. "He was _KITT,_ I _knew_ him, I knew what he was capable of! All the pieces were there, but I —" In the blink of an eye, rage became loathing. "He's dead because I wasn't fucking fast enough. Because I didn't see what was right in front of my nose. Because I was too busy puking my guts out to pay attention while he _died_." 

"That's not fair," Steve said, and when Tony turned an incredulous glare and rising eyebrows in his direction he continued firmly: "When you realized what was going on you tried to stop him. It was the Other Guy who held you back and saved your life — which was what KITT would have wanted. I think he deliberately kept you in the dark because he didn't want you to become another casualty. He knew you too, and he knew what you were likely to do — and he wanted you to live." 

"Fuck you," Tony said in a tone almost of awe. "You didn't know him. You didn't even _like_ him." 

"That's not true either. I knew him well enough to trust him in combat — and to know that his primary concern was always protecting you. And that's what he did, right to the end." 

Tony sucked back another angry mouthful, his eyes momentarily unfocussing before locking onto Steve'e face again. "And that's s'posed to — what? Make me feel better?" 

Steve met his burning gaze steadily. "No, but maybe this will: he died a hero." 

The billionaire choked out a bitter bark of laughter and downed the rest of his glass. "Oh, Roger-Dodger — only you would think that something like that could make things magically better." 

"And anyway," Steve continued, a bit stung by the constant attacks when all he was trying to do was help, "can't you just build another one?" 

In Tony's defence, Steve realized it was a punch-worthy question a quarter of a second after it left his mouth. A half second after that, having paused just long enough to stare at Steve like Steve had suddenly sprouted an extra head, Tony lunged out of his seat and halfway across the table, one fist cocked back to take his best shot at the serum-enhanced supersoldier who watched in equal disbelief as Fury, with commendable reflexes, grabbed Tony by the shoulders and wrestled him back into his chair.  

" _Tony!_ " But the Director's sternest command inflection couldn't penetrate the combination of alcohol and rage and grief that had caught fire in Tony's mind: he struggled to get free and continue the attack, yelling at the top of his lungs. 

"Build another one? _Build another one?_ What the — you son of a bitch, what th'hell d'y'think he _was?_ A fucking _toaster?_ " He was straining to overcome Fury's hold, but at least he wasn't so stupid with drink that he actually tried to take a swing at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent: his blazing eyes were completely focussed on Steve. "You did, didn't you? Fucking jumped-up — muscle-bound — patriotic bitch-boy — too  —  fucking stupid to see what was _right there_ — staring you in the face!"  

 _My God,_ Steve realized in a lightning-bolt epiphany, _I just told a grieving father to rebuild his lost child._ The pieces of the puzzle fell into place, clicked tight — 

— and still didn't quite fit. But at least they were all on the same table now. 

"Tony," Fury was saying, his right arm now locked tightly around Tony's straining shoulders and his voice pitched low to get his attention, "Tony, calm down. Easy. Easy." 

"Fucking _moron!_ ' Tony moaned as all the energy drained from his body, dropping him bonelessly back into his chair. His gaze, still fixed on Steve's face, was full of wonder and anguish. "He liked you, y'know. He _admired_ you. Always called you one of the — the bravest men he'd ever met. Ever had the privilege to know. An' I — if I'd died — the imprint —"  

He squeezed his eyes shut and tipped his head back, breathing harshly through parted lips. Steve was still staring at him, trying to make sense of those last seven inexplicable words, when Tony laughed like a man coughing up blood. "D'matter. S'dead. N'ver matter again." 

Slowly Fury let go of him, leaving only a firm hand on his shoulder to prop him upright — he was limp in his seat, legs sprawled, arms loose. "Captain, I think he's had enough. Get him to his assigned quarters and put him between the sheets." 

"C'ld've," Tony mumbled as Steve drained his glass — waste not, want not — and got up to come around to Tony's other side. But the second he laid his hand on the inventor's left shoulder Tony's eyes flickered open and his dulled gaze dragged toward the centre of the lab and what was left of Obsidian. "No f'ck'in way! Leave him here — let you — open him up — _take_ him —" 

"I'll stay with him, Tony." Bruce said kindly. "I'll make sure nothing happens to him. I promise." 

And then Tony let Steve pull him to his feet and get an arm around his back while arranging his left arm around Steve's shoulders, Steve's left hand locked around his limp wrist. It would have been easier to just heave Tony over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, or maybe sweep him up in his arms bridal style, but being dragged stumbling through the Helicarrier's halls was marginally more dignified. "Come on, Tony — let's go." 

Tony's head lolled. He muttered something so blurry that even Steve's enhanced hearing couldn't decipher it. Steve looked to Bruce, who was watching with a tiny sad smile, and nodded a promise: "I'll be right back." 

"It's okay, Steve, I can —" 

"You're dead on your feet too. You need to get some rest." He nodded with finality. "That's an order, Dr. Banner. I'll relieve you as soon as I've gotten this taken care of." 

Bruce, of course, could have easily told him to go fuck himself, that nobody told the Hulk's alter ego what to do. But he simply nodded acquiescence, a tremendous depth of weariness finally breaking cover in his brown eyes. "If you insist." 

Steve could feel Fury's thoughtful gaze following them as he hauled Tony away. 

************************************** 

Two hours later. The silent lab, its peace marred only the background hum of the carrier's systems. And Steve standing at the windows again, now completely alone. 

Well. Alone unless you counted a corpse, and in spite of himself he had to admit that Obsidian's remains seemed to possess their own quality of gravity. His gaze kept finding its way to that table, to contemplate the broken shell — and the fact that it was undeniably empty now. 

Which implied that there'd been something to fill it in the first place. 

Tony had accused him of not liking KITT. That wasn't quite true — it was more accurate to say that he'd never quite known what to make of him. JARVIS was as smooth as the background murmur of a placid stream, easy to ignore if one chose, but KITT… KITT had possessed too many sharp edges and flares of brilliance to be overlooked. He'd had a knack for walking into a room in either of his humanoid bodies and immediately commanding attention, and even as the car he'd had a talent for infusing every word he spoke with the force of a vivid personality. 

Machines didn't possess charisma. Or they shouldn't, anyway. If you'd asked Steve ten months ago, he would have stated without qualification that charisma was a function of the soul and that the notion of a machine possessing a soul was flat-out ridiculous, even in the twenty-first century. But perhaps it was possible to craft a simulation so accurate, an illusion so finely drawn, that the casual observer would be fooled into perceiving a spirit where none existed. 

But Steve was no casual observer. His instincts had never failed him yet, and every instinct he possessed told him: _KITT is **present**. He's got weight and form. He's as real as any of us, in every dimension._  

It wasn't accurate to say that he'd disliked KITT. In fact, he'd liked him just fine. The robot had been sharp, witty, bright, and dependable: if Steve gave him an assignment, he'd always find a way to carry it out to perfection. But it was fair to say that KITT made him deeply uneasy, because the A.I.'s very existence raised questions about the nature of the soul and the providence of God that Steve really didn't want to contemplate. He didn't believe for a second that a soul could be created in a lab, and that meant that if his intuitions had been correct, if KITT possessed a spirit as strong as any that inhabited bodies of flesh and blood… 

… then that soul must have been put there for a purpose. God, as Einstein had said in 1943, did not play dice with the universe. And if God had given this machine a soul, then that was a game-changer no matter which way you sliced it.  

Steve had prayed: _Lord, help me to understand._ But as was so often the case, the Heavenly Father hadn't seen fit to share His strategies with someone as unimportant as Steve Rogers. Which had left Steve to deal with whatever he had to work with, and the facts he'd had access to didn't amount to much: that KITT both legally belonged to Tony Stark and was somehow imprinted on him, and that his loyalty was theoretically unshakeable.  When Steve had paused to think about it he'd actually pitied KITT for being stuck with Tony, a man who had elevated atheism and irreverence to an art form, because to be treated as mere property when one possessed a spirit as alive and as sensitive as any other… 

But clearly Tony had viewed KITT as so much more than that — otherwise the A.I.'s destruction wouldn't be tearing him apart like this. The months of interaction that Steve had witnessed between them, full of arguments and teasing and unflinching trust in each other's abilities, hadn't been merely a simulation of a relationship on KITT's side and a flippant game on Tony's: they had been true. Tony, as tone-deaf as he was to all things spiritual, hadn't been blind to this. 

And now he'd lost his partner, his friend — and clearly something more. Steve wanted to say his child, but no matter which way he twisted the term it didn't quite match up with the shape of what lay before him. Maybe he was thinking about this too much. After all, Tony was a consummate eccentric: was it really so hard to believe that his attachments to others would be equally far off the standard marks? 

Still. Uneasy. Disturbing. Not quite _right_. Something about it sent a prickle of cold up Steve's spine, as if he'd laid his hand on a slithering form in the darkness and wasn't sure yet if it was venomous or harmless. 

He closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer for grace, forgiveness, and salvation. If KITT had been a creature of God, albeit one unlike any other, he deserved no less — and Tony, certainly, would never think to grant him that particular blessing. 


	11. Hope

Roughly eight hours after the Dragon had been blown from the sky, Bruce came walking back into Lab Ten looking a little less the worse for wear. "Thanks, Steve. I needed that."

Steve, who'd been sitting the table staring into his fifth cup of coffee and letting his mind drift back over his own past — with many aching stops at Bucky's death, which perhaps wasn't that surprising — looked up and frowned. "That wasn't very —" 

"I promised Tony I'd keep an eye on him. It's my responsibility, not yours." He came to sit down across from Steve, resting both elbows on the table and rubbing at his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, then grimaced faintly and continued in a conversational tone:  "This is going to be bad. He'll have to deal with Silver and the car too, once we get back to New York. I can't see any way that's not going to turn ugly." 

"We'll be there for him." It was an answer Steve didn't hesitate to give. "We'll get him through it." 

Bruce looked both amused and troubled. " _We_ don't matter. There's only so much we can do for him." 

Steve had another sip of coffee while he calculated angles of approach. "He really cared about him, didn't he?" 

But Bruce just smiled faintly, as if he could clearly see Steve crashing and stumbling through the tall grass in an inept attempt to outflank him. "Maybe you should ask him yourself." 

"Look," Steve pressed, "I'm not trying to cut Tony down here. I'm trying to figure out a way to help." 

The physicist's smile grew wider and warmer. "Try not asking him if he can build another one. That'd be a good start." 

Steve winced. _Mea culpa,_ and time for the direct approach. "So what's the story? I can't even start planning if —" 

All the lab's screens beeped imperatively, causing them both to look round sharply, then share a glance. "Priority One message," Bruce said, rising and crossing to the screen in front of Obsidian and tapping at a flashing red icon to bring up two short lines of small text. "Huh. Wonder what —?" 

Steve's enhanced vision picked up the header easily: the message was from Nick Fury, addressed to Bruce, and for that reason Steve read no further even though he could have read the remaining smaller letters with ease. But the way Bruce's shoulders stiffened and he drew a small sharp breath was its own form of communication, even though Steve could only see his face in one quarter profile. 

"What?" Steve asked, setting aside his cup. 

"Go get Tony." His voice was tight with excitement. "Go get Tony _now._ "  

He thought of how he'd practically poured Tony into bed less than five hours ago, sodden and insensible. "That's really not —" 

"Tell him —" And Bruce said something that clearly made sense to him but was Greek to Steve. His hands were flying over the interface, minimizing the message and calling up other windows. "Don't worry, he'll understand it. Just _go!_ " 

Steve was baffled. But clearly time was of the essence for whatever reason, so he went. 

************************************** 

He found Tony right where he'd left him: in his bunk, in twilight dimness, although he'd rolled over to face the wall and was curled up in a ball that radiated misery. 

"Tony?" He didn't turn on the small room's main light. That would have been cruelty on top of everything else. 

"Cap?" His voice was low and hoarse in a way that made Steve's heart clench in sympathy. "Tell me I've just had the worst nightmare of my life. Tell me there was never any Dragon. But most of all, tell me he's still alive." 

"Tony —" 

"Lie if you have to." A bitter cough of laughter. " _Please._ " 

"I'm…" He couldn't do it. He just couldn't. "I'm sorry." 

After a long moment Tony sighed from the gut, almost a groan, before rolling over and sitting up. He was wiping at his face with the palm of his hand, and Steve caught the gleam of moisture there even in the dimness. He looked small and rumpled, his irrepressible spirit beaten bloody.

"What do you want?" he asked brusquely after he'd blinked the sleep and the tears from his eyes, fixing Steve with a glare that tried to be defiant and almost made it. 

"Bruce sent me. He says there's a message from Fury — something about a data packet from KITT being received along with the recon information?" 

The stillness that suddenly settled on Tony's face was far worse than any scorn. " _What_ did you just say?" 

Maybe he'd gotten the details wrong somehow. "I said —" 

"I heard you the first time. _Fuck_. Come on!" And he scrambled out of bed and leaped for the door, setting a pace that didn't let up (and resolutely ignoring the stares of Helicarrier personnel as he sprinted through the halls) until he skidded into Lab Ten with Steve close on his heels. 

"Bruce —!" 

Bruce was at a different screen now, scrolling through a list, and he answered at once: "He included a message in the recon data that was triple encoded and addressed to you." A more concerned glance, a trace of a frown. "Are you sure you want to —?" 

"Transfer it to JARVIS." He strode to the screen closest to Obsidian and scanned the data there. Steve, coming round to stand at Obsidian's head, saw every plane of his face as sharp as a razor, his breath coming deep and fast. "JARVIS, decode!" 

" _Right away, sir."_ A very short pause, no more than a second, perhaps. _"KITT used a variation of my own Level Three encryption protocol. The message is ready, shall I —?_ " 

"Play it," Tony breathed, his eyes shining ferociously. JARVIS obeyed, and the sharp Boston accent of Obsidian came through the portable unit's high-end speakers, brisk but undeniably tense. 

" _Tony, if I succeeded you'll still be alive to hear this — and I'll have written myself a one-way ticket, but at least I'll have taken the Dragon with me. I don't suppose I need to explain why I had to do it: my own life is pretty insignificant when weighed against all the cities and people who stood to die if I hadn't taken action. I just wanted you to know that the last nine months of my existence have been the happiest I've ever known. We've had a beautiful partnership, you and I. It was a pleasure and an honour to serve you._ "  

The gleam of tears in Tony's eyes was unrepentant this time. Steve looked away and bowed his head, knowing that this was something that he wasn't meant to witness, and that the memory of being seen weeping would only haunt Tony hard later on — even if he didn't care at this moment, lost as he was in listening to the voice of his dead partner. 

" _So, I guess this is goodbye,"_ KITT continued, and because he was not actually present he did not pause when the lab doors opened behind Tony to admit Nick Fury, followed by Thor, Natasha and Clint. _"I'm going to try breaking up my core program into triple-encoded data packets immediately after I've overloaded the Dragon's systems and sending those packets out on the first EMP wave, but ten to thirty microseconds isn't much time to calibrate on the fly and I'll only get one chance to do it right. It's an insanely long shot, but it's all I've got to offer. If I succeeded you'll find bits and pieces of my core program embedded in the Helicarrier's computer systems, and reconstruction might just be possible. If not,"_ and his voice grew suddenly softer, full of something far too much like compassion, _"I'm sorry it had to end like this, and for what it's worth, I loved you far more than the imprint alone could account for. And Tony… take care of yourself? Especially since I'll no longer be around to do it for you._ " 

"KITT," Tony whispered. Steve had rarely heard so much pain, pride and exultation breathed into a single syllable. He used the heel of his right hand to roughly wipe away his tears. "Oh, baby — you're a fucking _genius!_ " 

"Tony," Fury said, the command clear: _Look at me._ Tony ignored him, looking instead to the portable unit. 

"JARVIS, access the Helicarrier's mainframe and all auxiliary —" 

Fury's eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. "Excuse me?" 

Eyes now dry, Tony turned to fix Fury with a gaze full of fire and ice. For the first time since Obsidian's sacrifice he looked fully, ferociously alive. "KITT's in there, and we're going to get him out." 

Fury's stare in response was cold as stone, immovable: "You've got to be out of your mind." 


	12. United

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Excuse _you?_ " 

Fury advanced a single step, trying to overbear. "For one thing, even if he managed to send the packets _and_ encode them to escape detection by our anti-virus software —" 

Tony, proud little strutting cock that he was — and driven by devotion to boot — wasn't cowed. "You want to see how fast JARVIS can hack all your systems and bring this whole thing crashing down in flames? Just try to keep us out." 

Fury's scowl deepened. "And do _you_ want to see how fast we can turn your remaining A.I. into junk code? After that last stunt you pulled there is absolutely _no_ way I'm going to let you —" 

His voice rose. "Maybe you missed the part about KITT being —" 

Fury matched it. "I didn't miss the part about him infiltrating a S.H.I.E.L.D. —" 

Shouting now: "Because he had no other —!" 

Thor slammed Mjolnir against the side of one of the steel tables, caving it in a good three inches. Equipment slid and crashed to the floor, glass shattered, and everybody's attention was immediately and completely refocussed. 

"This is a matter not even worthy of debate," the demi-god asserted, and crossed to Tony's side to lock gazes with Fury. "KITT may not have been a man of flesh and blood, but he was nonetheless our shield-brother, and he sacrificed himself to slay the beast that the rest of us could not touch. If he yet lives, it is our duty to find him and bring him home to Tony's halls." He laid a strong broad hand on Tony's shoulder, smiling briefly down at the shorter man. "Honour — and friendship — dictate no less." 

To Steve's greater surprise, Natasha stepped forward to stand on Tony's other side. "KITT is an asset we can't afford to lose," she stated. "If there's any chance of retrieving his program, we need to pursue it." 

Clint, of course, backed her up — silently, with a single step in Fury's direction, but the way he crossed his arms communicated finality. 

Steve drew a deep breath and crossed the line, moving to stand with Thor and ignoring, for the moment, Tony's look of outright surprise. "KITT was a machine, but he was also a soldier," he explained in response to Fury's even darker glower. He glanced at Tony briefly and was unexpectedly warmed by the glow of wry gratitude he saw in the billionaire's brown eyes, penetrating even their habitual wariness. "And he was under my command. You don't leave members of your own unit to die, not when there's any hope of saving them." 

And then Bruce, with an almost apologetic smile, raised his hand and took one small step out of his corner — a tiny gesture, but it spoke volumes. Faced with the prospect of the Hulk rampaging through his Helicarrier, Fury really had no other choice but to look around at them all and say: "I'm giving you one hour. Make good use of it."

 "That should be enough," Natasha stated, heading for the one screen not currently being used.  

"JARVIS." Tony had already turned back to the screen above Obsidian and was tapping commands into its interface at a furious pace, paying no attention to the machine that had obsessed him only hours earlier. "Access the Helicarrier's mainframe and all auxiliary systems, looking for encoded data packages bearing KITT's signature. Dig deep, buddy — no stone unturned." 

" _Understood, sir._ " 

"And update my Twitter: _May be able to recover Obsidian, stay tuned for further developments._ " 

" _Very good, sir. Shall I crosspost the message to Facebook as well?_ ' 

"Do it. Blanket social media. Let's get the word out, stop all those Obsidian fangirls weeping into their pillows." 

Steve decided to cut to the heart of the matter: "You mean, he's alive?" 

"He will be," Tony muttered, preoccupied, "when we find all his pieces and put him back together again." 

Natasha, busy at her screen's interface, added: "But if any of the parts are damaged or unrecoverable, he may not function properly — or at all." 

Even knowing as little as he did about computers, Steve could make sense of that. "Is there anything I can —" The intensity of Thor's sidelong glance caught his eye. "Anything _we_ can do?" 

"Coffee," Tony said offhandedly, setting up some kind of interface. "Lots of coffee. And sandwiches — big-ass sandwiches, I'm fucking _starving_." 

"Enough to feed the hosts of Valhalla," Thor promised, and turned to stride past Fury and out the door with Clint on his heels. Steve followed them far enough to come face to face with the Director himself. 

"You said you _wanted_ to get him back," he half-questioned in a low voice. It was as close to an accusation as he wanted to get, but it made one corner of Fury's mouth quirk upward. 

"I have more than one iron in the fire, Captain," he replied, equally low, and with that enigmatic statement he departed, leaving Steve with another mystery to chew over while he waited for other people to make things happen. 


	13. Resurrection

And as it turned out, things moved pretty damned fast now that the team had a clock to beat. 

Steve hadn't gone out of his way to learn more about modern computer technology than was necessary to navigate his way through S.H.I.E.L.D. software, so a lot of the chatter passing between Tony, Bruce and Natasha went over his head, but he watched carefully and was able to pick up the gist of it. With JARVIS taking point, Tony and Natasha were tracking and isolating and collecting the parts of KITT's program that had ended up in the Helicarrier's systems, while Bruce was helping organize what they found, referencing Tony or JARVIS when he had any questions.  

It was a measure of how fast Tony was bouncing back from the brink that when Thor and Clint returned with food and coffee he gulped a whole cup at one go and wolfed down two ham and cheese sandwiches without even pausing to inhale, then threw himself back into the work with new light in his eyes and a warmer flush on his cheeks. It was a bit like seeing a man resuscitated from near-death, and Steve, not for the first time in his long and interrupted life, found comfort in the redeeming power of love and friendship. 

Because that was so clearly what this was. Now that Steve knew what to look for it was written all over Tony's face and in every swift purposeful movement of his rugged engineer's hands. His teammates had stood by him when it counted, and the hope of regaining KITT was a driving force of such obvious power that Steve had to wonder how the hell he hadn't noticed it before.  

 _Maybe because I was trying so hard not to think about what KITT might or might not be._ Sitting quietly at the table with Thor and Clint, sipping his own coffee, he watched the activity that he didn't need to understand in order to perceive what was really going on: a race for life. _Trying to keep him in the 'just a machine' category, and now that absolutely will not fly. The team dynamic has changed, whether or not Tony gets KITT back. And if KITT does come back, nobody can deny that Tony looks at KITT as a lot more than just one of his machines — or that KITT was willing to die when it counted. He's not just a handy tool any more: he's an Avenger, as much as any of us._  

He glanced at Clint, seeing the slight unbending in the archer's stiff shoulders as he watched Tony fight for what was his. _Even Clint's changed his mind, and he's never been comfortable around Obsidian. If —_  

"That's it," Tony announced abruptly, as most of the red elements on the transparent screen in front of him shifted to bright green. "We've got 'em. JARVIS, confirm?" 

" _All elements of KITT's program appear to be present. However, there has been irremediable degradation in three of the four hundred and forty-six program components."_  

Tony's nodded curtly, the tendons in his neck visibly tightening. "Which ones?" 

" _The vocalization module has been damaged: verbal output will be compromised until it is replaced, ideally with a copy of the existing equivalent module from the Silver android._ " 

"And?" 

" _One of his aesthetic appreciation subroutines has been compromised._ " 

"Is that all? Easy fix, and even if it's not I can put up with him mooning over black velvet clown paintings and Barry Manilow. What else?" 

" _Minor damage to the core algorithm managing global proprioception in the Obsidian android."_   

"Replaceable. That's it? You're sure?" 

" _Yes, and positive._ "

 Tony's shoulders slumped, his eyes closing tightly. "I don't know which of us has the bigger solid gold horseshoe up his ass," he muttered, then gave himself a shake and straightened again to regard the screen intently. "Compile and check for process gaps, and if it all looks solid transfer in KITT's last memory backup from this morning." 

" _Compiling. Checking process flow. No gaps detected. Importing last memory backup, KITT-2875."_ A much longer pause. _"Memory archive successfully imported."_  

"Right." He snapped his fingers, right-left, an absentminded gesture of tension Steve was by now familiar with. "Fire him up, let's see how he runs." 

" _Very good, sir. Initializing core program KITT-1. I've networked his communication module into the screen in front of you, please watch that for messages. His visual systems are tied into the lab's camera array._ " 

A tight smile cornered Tony's mouth. "Thanks, JARV — you're a doll." 

Everybody in the room was now watching Tony's screen, where scrolling red lists of arcane terms and number sequences were rapidly turning green, green, green. Within seconds no red was left, and Steve found himself holding his breath. 

The screen flashed to clear, a green placeholder blinking in the centre of it. One flash. Two. Three. Then it skidded to the right, words spilling out of it: 

 _TONY? WHAT HAPPENED? WHY AM I IN THIS SYSTEM?_  

Tony's face lit up like the sun breaking free of a thunderstorm's pall. "You saved the world, baby," he said in a voice hoarse with emotion, then laughed and wiped at his eyes, grinning like a lunatic. "You saved the motherfucking _world._ " 

A pause, then a new line appeared above the first: 

 _I SHOULD THINK I WOULD REMEMBER SOMETHING LIKE THAT._  

"JARVIS, give him the 411 and then transfer his core program to the Silver android in Stark Tower." 

 _NO!_ A triple flash, faster, then: _I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU._  

Tony shook his head. "A S.H.I.E.L.D. computer system is no place for you. I want you back in my territory, where I know you'll be safe." He stepped up to the screen and raised his hand to touch it, tracing KITT's last words with his fingertips, still smiling radiantly. "I'm coming home, Kitten," he said so tenderly that for a second Steve's throat actually tightened. "Just wait for me, okay?" 

After a moment a single word flashed into existence: _ALWAYS._ Closely followed by: _BUT DON'T MAKE ME WAIT TOO LONG._  

"JARVIS?" Tony asked softly after perhaps three more seconds. 

" _KITT has been successfully transferred to the Silver android in New York City_." 

Tony drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging, and for a heartbeat Steve thought that he might be on the verge of weeping again. Instead he repeated: "JARVIS?" 

" _Sir?_ " 

"New social media update, all in caps: HE'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!" 

" _Done, sir,_ " JARVIS said, and then Bruce and Tony were in each other's arms, hugging and grinning like a couple of madmen, and a second later Thor had to get in on the act with a joyous bellow, and then Steve was on his feet and moving forward and Tony broke away from the huddle to eye him up and down, as if debating whether or not punching him would be appropriate at this point in time. 

"I got the reference," Steve told him while Bruce hugged Natasha, who didn't seem to mind, and Thor stood waiting his turn like the gentleman he really was in his heart. "But I promise not to tell him you compared him to Frankenstein's monster." 

"Oh yeah?" 

Steve nodded. "If you promise not to tell him that I said something stupid enough to make you take a swing at me in the first place." 

He stuck out his hand. Tony grabbed it, growled "C'mere, you!", and pulled him into a fierce hug. 

Steve held onto him for a second, felt the shiver of inhalation that ran through his whole sturdy body and was almost but not quite a sob, then held him more gently and patted him on the back. "It's okay," he said quietly, for Tony's ears only. "He's okay." 

"Hell yeah," Tony whispered. He pressed his nose to Steve's shoulder, and Steve heard a small but definite sniffle. " _Hell_ yeah."

After a count of three Steve let go of him and stepped back, looking round at the rest of his team, who were all looking back at him expectantly. "Grab your kit," he told them in his best command voice, "and hit the quinjet. We're going home." 

And Steve, himself, carried the remains of Obsidian out of Lab Ten, with Tony at his side the entire way, for all the world as if he was actually _proud_ to have his CO's help — or maybe, just maybe, as if he was proud to have the help of a friend. 


	14. Reunion

It wasn't until they were more than halfway back to NYC, the quinjet cruising at 40,000 feet while Tony regaled the rest of the team with a risque tale punctuated by bright bursts of hyena laughter, that one possible meaning of Fury's quip about "irons in the fire" occurred to Steve. 

It didn't take much figuring out. All he had to do was look around at all the Avengers, at the glow of connection practically shining between them in the aftermath of forming a united front against Fury on behalf of another member of the unit, and the Director's strategy became crystal clear.

 As for the rest of it, Fury's webs could probably wait to be untangled another day. Right now Tony and Thor were doing their level best to one-up each other in terms of how many "comely young maidens" they'd slept with, while Bruce just shook his head and Natasha, up front, almost audibly rolled her eyes. It was a measure of Steve's contented mood that he didn't even have the heart to tell them to tone down the raunch, what were they, all born in a barn? 

His team. And he couldn't have been prouder. 

************************************** 

"Oh God," Tony groaned as Clint brought the jet around toward Stark Tower. "tell me the truth, I'm a hot mess, right?" He ran both hands back through his sweat-tousled hair, which only made it stick up even more wildly, and huffed with exasperation. "I knew I should've brought along a change of clothes on this three-hour tour." 

"He's not going to care, Stark," Clint remarked from the cockpit.  

"Easy for you to say," Tony snorted. He turned in Steve's direction: "You're all for truth, justice and the American way, Captain — how bad is it? C'mon, be honest." 

Looking him up and down, taking in his sneakers and rumpled black pants and grease-stained dirty grey Judas Priest t-shirt, Steve quirked one corner of his mouth and replied: "You look like someone who worked under a car for three days straight before getting hit by a puking dose of Dragon's breath." 

Tony nodded with a sort of satisfaction. "Thought so." With typical disregard for all regulations concerning standing up when the jet was on an approach, he shot to his feet and stepped up between Clint and Natasha to grip the backs of their seats in both hands and peer through the window between them. "And there he is, looking like a fashion plate as usual. Probably won't let me get within ten feet of him until I've been through a full decontamination shower. Twice." 

"Stark," Steve said, but he said it mildly. 

"Right, right," Tony grumbled, moving back to his seat and dropping into it with a dramatic flounce. "Keep my hands inside the vehicle at all times and so on and so forth. God, Steve, you missed your true calling: Six Flags could use another good ride attendant." 

"Somebody has to keep an eye on you," Steve observed, "when you insist on treating the whole world as your own personal amusement park." 

Which earned him a stare of outright, if probably exaggerated, surprise. "Did you just… zing me?" 

Steve leaned back and folded his arms, keeping his expression impassive. "Maybe." 

"Holy Hell, is it the end of the world and nobody told me?" Tony demanded as the quinjet touched down and settled, but he was already on his feet again, nearly bouncing with barely contained excitement as the ramp cracked open and began to lower. The rest of the Avengers got to their feet with a lot less haste, none of them beating Tony as he darted forward and jumped the remaining two feet to the helicopter pad without even waiting for the ramp to fully descend, sprinting toward the slim grey-suited figure of Kitt Silver waiting at a prudent distance of thirty feet. 

 _At least one of them has a lick of —_ Steve thought, just before his mind crashed headlong into a brick wall, because he'd expected a warm embrace between friends but he certainly hadn't expected Tony to waste no time taking Kitt's face in both hands and kissing him like he was trying to drink the android's soul through its softly parted lips. 

Tony Stark. Kissing a _robot_. A _male_ robot. A male robot that had tenderly wrapped its arms around his waist and was kissing him back with equal enthusiasm. 

For a stunned span of seconds all Steve could do was stare, his breath stalled in his chest, as the pieces of the puzzle he'd been fighting with since this morning finally clicked solidly into place. And _what_ a place! Good Lord — 

"They're…" He turned, opening his mouth to share his stunned disbelief with everyone else — only to discover that the other Avengers seemed completely unsurprised by this development. Natasha and Clint were already down the ramp and heading for the entrance to the Tower proper, talking in Russian as casually as if they weren't walking past Tony Stark — _Tony "I've never met a pretty woman I wouldn't make a pass at" Stark!_ — still lip-locked with his own machine.  

Thor just smiled happily at Bruce, who smiled back and tossed a glance and a shrug — _What're you gonna do?_ — in Steve's direction before they both left the quinjet, giving Tony and Kitt a respectfully wide berth. Which left Steve standing there at the top of the ramp, eyes wide as saucers, until several seconds later when Tony finally broke the kiss long enough to cast a glare back over his shoulder. 

"You got a problem, Stevie-boy?" he asked, and maybe it was Steve's imagination, but he didn't actually sound all that annoyed.  

"Uh." _They're… oh God, they're…_ ** _lovers?_** "Ah." _Lovers! How does that even…?_ "I —"  

Kitt was looking up the ramp too, one eyebrow cocked upward in a way that suggested both amusement and concern. "Captain Rogers?" he queried pointedly, sounding so damned _human_ — but he wasn't, he was —  

"I think we broke him," Tony said, this time with undisguised glee, then laughed outright, giving Kitt another quick kiss before letting go of him, but only to turn him toward the entrance and wind an arm around his slender waist. "C'mon, Kitten, let's give him some space to pick up the pieces of his brain. I have a _lot_ of things I'd rather be doing right now besides watching him do his best goldfish impersonation." 

"I hope they include eating excellent Thai food," Kitt said slyly, "because I've ordered enough to feed a small army." 

"Mm-hm — first food, then hot thought-you-were-dead-so-glad-you're-not sex." He leered, his dark eyes twinkling. "Although I could be easily persuaded to reverse the order, just for you." 

"Ton-y," Kitt drawled, half laughing, as they strolled away with an arm around each other's waists like two sweethearts on an evening walk in the park, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Steve hadn't blinked in over twenty-five seconds.  

"Okay, okay, shower first, _then_ —" 

"Tony!" Steve finally managed to get his mouth to work, although it took him another couple of racing heartbeats to phrase a coherent semi-question when they paused and looked back in his direction. "You… he…" 

" — is my gay robotic lover, yes Steve, do you need me to draw you a diagram?" Tony scowled, clearly impatient to be gone. "Look, if you have any questions, ask JARVIS — I plan to be very busy for the foreseeable future." 

"But — you —" At least ten different questions jostled for space in his throat, but the one that won the tussle was: "Why didn't you _tell_ me?" 

And there it was, the trademark Stark smirk, irrepressible. "Well, at the risk of repeating a terribly overused phrase… you never asked." 

"Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed nearly two years ago, you know," Kitt pointed out. 

"Quiet, you," Tony ordered fondly.   

A second question fought its way to the forefront: "You're — in _love_ with him?" 

"What did I just say about asking JARVIS?" Tony scowled. "Now, _if_ you'll excuse us, we've got a lot of catching up to do. And by that I mean, a lot of rolling around between the sheets." 

The final glance Kitt cast in Steve's direction, one finely drawn eyebrow on the rise, had notes of both apology and humour. But he let Tony lead him away, and the door had closed behind them before Steve, his mind now clocking along at well over a hundred miles an hour, recovered enough to choke out a third question: "JARVIS…?" 

" _I'm afraid so, Captain._ " 

"Well _hell_ ," Steve said with tremendous feeling, and in spite of the shock ( _Tony Stark!_ ) the feelings were overwhelmingly positive ones. After all, love was as priceless a thing in the twenty-first century as it had been in Steve's original time, and after his own experiences in that respect he couldn't find it in his heart to do anything, when all was said and done, but be happy for them. 

Even if they'd just made his own job exponentially more difficult, because if Fury's irons included anything to do with Tony and Kitt as a couple… 

Steve headed into the Tower with a thoughtful and purposeful stride, already starting to strategize as many ways as possible to keep his team safe.  

[THE END]


End file.
